17 Stuck-Busting Quotes from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way
“Oh my goodness, have you read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron? You HAVE to get a copy — it’s life-changing.”
When I hear this kind of rave review about a book, I try to pay attention. When I hear it over and over again from multiple people I trust in the span of a month or two, I google the book to see what the cover looks like, sample it on Audible, and read a few snippets about it online. If it doesn’t immediately look like something I’d love, I don’t buy it. If it does, I do. But The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron doesn’t have a modern, especially beautiful, or fancy, new cover. It isn’t available for an Audible sample. And nothing I found online made me want to rush out and buy it.
Still, woman after woman, friend after friend, kept telling me the same thing – You HAVE to read it.
So I did, and I literally found so much treasure inside that by the time I got to the middle of the book, my pen had run out of ink from all the underlining I was doing. So I slowed down to savor every page, taking the next 9 months to reach the end. Now I tell everyone I know they should read it, too. (And everyone who tells me they started it and didn’t quite get to the end, I tell them they HAVE to finish it.)
Because if you’ve ever wanted to create anything but felt stuck at step 1 or 2 (or before you even begin) this book is gold.
And if you’ve ever tried to create anything with little ones running around, you’ve felt stuck at least a time or two.
Also, #mombrain can last decades.
Regardless of whether or not you’ve heard of Julia Cameron before, if you’re even remotely interested in personal growth and the self-help world, I bet you’re familiar with some of her concepts. Here are some of the most famous ones I had no idea came from her:
➳ Progress not perfection.
➳ Give yourself permission to be a beginner.
➳ You’re not too old. How old you’ll be when it’s done is the same age you’ll be if you don’t do it.
➳ We are born creators — it’s not a luxury or only for a certain group of creative people.
➳ Play with your work.
➳ 5 am starts and writing your morning pages are important habits.
➳ Go for mystery, not mastery – Be curious, not a perfectionist.
➳ Spending time alone with your artistic side is powerful.
➳ Don’t hang out with toxic friends (crazymakers).
➳ Ask yourself on a regular basis what you would do if you weren’t too selfish or too afraid.
➳ Work creates work. Art creates art. Creativity requires action.
But you have to know something — the book goes so much deeper than that.
This book has so much to say in the screen-obsessed world we live in today.
So, I’m sharing a deep dive with you today, and I want you to know that many, many hours of reflection, prayer, and soul-soaring have gone into the words I’m sharing with you here. Today’s reflection in particular is dedicated to the beautiful women I know on Instagram and all the things I want to say to them (and to my own Instagram-loving self, too).
Dear one, Do you realize how much valuable material you’re putting into Instagram and Facebook posts? How much creativity you’re investing there? How underappreciated your gorgeous words are destined to be, crammed behind that little “Read More” button as they are? Oh mama, please tell me you’re letting your creative beauty out in other ways. Please tell me your Instagram captions are copied from greater, brighter, fuller pieces, articles, or journal entries. Please tell me you’re not measuring your artistic ability and eye for beauty by the number of likes on your posts and reels.
You, my darling, are a creative being.
Own it.
Create.
As much as you can. In as many crevices in the day as you can find. Feed your creativity as often as possible. More often than you think possible. Especially with books. (No time to read? Make it. Your brain won’t focus on books? Train it. Start with just one page a day. Build the muscle. I promise it’s worth it.) I read a lot of books last year, but the one that impacted me the most was The Artist’s Way. By far. By a million miles. Every page has ink all over it. There are more dog-ears, both big and small, than I can count. (And there may or may not be more than a little bit of saltwater making a few pages wavey from a couple of paddleboard excursions it accompanied me on.)
I can honestly say The Artist’s Way changed so much for me. Why? Because I’ve been kind of stuck lately, kind of afraid with my creativity, hiding it for just over three decades. So when I started letting my creativity peek out of her closet just a little bit and person after person started recommending Julia Cameron to me, I was ready.
Being ready is such an important first step, hey?
If you’re just a little bit stuck, too, hopefully one of these quotes from The Artist’s Way will make you curious enough to read it.
(I do have to warn you though: It might change your life, too.)
➳ “Creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent.”
Pressure’s off. All you have to do is accept it.
➳ ”Don’t be daunted by the amount of work it seems to entail. Much of the work is really play, and the course takes little more than one hour a day.”
Just play. That’s it. That’s when your creative genius will meet you.
➳ ”Stop taking the Censor as the voice of reason and learn to hear it for the blocking device that it is . . . Listen to your Censor and it will tell you that everything original is wrong/dangerous/rotten.”
You know the one. Stop listening to her.
➳ “Many of us wish we were more creative. Many of us sense we are creative, but unable to effectively tap into that creativity. Our dreams elude us. Our lives feel somehow flat. Often, we have great ideas, wonderful dreams, but are unable to actualize them for ourselves. . . We hunger for what might be called creative living. . . “
And in the same spirit, this gem from Pablo Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” You are an artist. Yes, you.
➳ “Parents seldom respond, ‘Try it and see what happens’ to artistic urges issuing from their offspring.”
Parents are wrong. What did your parents say to you about your painting, writing, singing? Why are you still listening to them?
➳ “It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. . . Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”
It’s going to feel like you’re the biggest goofball ever when you’re publishing your blog, writing your book, starting your catering company, painting on canvas, or trying anything for the first time. Do it anyway. Let it make you laugh at yourself. (It’s so much fun.)
➳ ”The Great Creator has gifted us with creativity. Our gift back is our use of it. Do not let friends squander your time. . . Do not let their fears and second thoughts derail you.”
People who love you will be concerned that you’re wasting your time with your new hobby/love. Don’t listen to them. Keep going. Don’t quit until it doesn’t bring you joy anymore.
➳ ”Whether they appear as your overbearing mother, your manic boss, your needy friend, or your stubborn spouse, the crazymakers in your life share certain destructive patterns that make them poisonous for any sustained creative work. . . Crazymakers are often blocked creatives themselves. Afraid to effectively tap into their own creativity, they are loath to allow that same creativity in others. It makes them jealous.”
Love and share other things with them, sure, but don’t let them take away your creativity. (Also, they’ll probably come around and appreciate your creative pursuits eventually — the good ones will, at least.)
➳ ”Sloth, apathy, and despair are the enemy. Anger is not . . . It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interests. Anger is not action itself. It is action’s invitation.”
Stop letting anger make you afraid. Let it lead you to your joy.
➳ ”One reason we are miserly with ourselves is scarcity thinking. We don’t want our luck to run out. . . Remembering that God is our source, an energy flow that likes to extend itself, we become more able to tap our creative power effectively. God has lots of money. God has lots of movie ideas, novel ideas, poems, songs, paintings, acting jobs.”
Seriously, stop it with the limits.
➳ “Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead.”
It’s not superior. Just limiting.
➳ ”Very often a risk is worth taking simply for the sake of taking it. . . Selecting a challenge and meeting it creates a sense of self-empowerment that becomes the ground for further successful challenges.”
And just in case you don’t get her drift, here’s some clarity from Jake La Motta: “So do it. If you win, you win, and if you lose, you win.”
➳ ”Fixated on the need to have something to show for our labors, we often deny our curiosities. Every time we do this, we are blocked.”
Get curious. Stay curious.
➳ ”Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety. We prefer the low-grade pain and occasional heart-stopping panic attack to the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction. Filling the form means that we must work with what we have rather than languish in complaints over what we have not.”
Sounds a little bit like the contentment journey and Simple Abundance, hey?
➳ ”Once we admit the need for help, the help arrives. The ego always wants to claim self-sufficiency. It would rather pose as a creative loner than ask for help. Ask.”
Send the email. Make the call. Start the program. Ask the question. Just do it and see what happens.
➳ “Only recently recognized as an addiction, workaholism still receives a great deal of support in our society. The phrase I’m working has a certain unassailable air of goodness and duty to it. The truth is, we are very often working to avoid ourselves, our spouses, our real feelings. . . Play can make a workaholic very nervous. Fun is scary.”
You’re not a workaholic though, right? You make time to have fun and always keep work in its proper place. You never bury yourself in meetings, emails, and to-dos, thinking you absolutely have to do it all or it won’t get done, hey? (Yeah, I do that sometimes, too.) Let’s play, dear one. Let’s use this one wild, wonderful life of ours to live and love and play.
➳ “Become willing to see the hand of God and accept it as a friend’s offer to help you with what you are doing.”
If you read stories about all the great painters, musicians, writers, and creators who have left behind so much value for us, do you know what most of them will have in common? Alone in their zone, when they were most in the flow of creation, they had a sense that they weren’t creating alone. So many of them felt helped, moved, and filled by, some even felt they were channeling a Higher Power. We are, too. (And remember, you don’t have to be a perfect mom to share what you write, make, do, create. None of us are.)
But maybe you don’t think you’re an artist.
Maybe you’re just a little doubtful that you fit into the creative bucket. That’s actually a really good indicator that The Artist’s Way might just help that stuck feeling you’ve been having lately. (Ask me how I know.) As Carl Jung says, “But if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.” And in the great words of SBB in Simple Abundance, “I believe with all my heart that the ability to bring forth art from real life is a gift every woman possesses. Whether we choose to nurture this perfectly natural endowment is quite another matter . . . Women are Artists of the Everyday. The world does not acknowledge or applaud everyday art, so we must.”
Every woman.
That’s you.
(It’s men, too.)
No matter how long it’s been or how much energy you’ve spent avoiding it, you’re still one of us — a creative.
Paint it.
Sketch it out.
Build it.
Make it.
Bake it.
Create it.
Because “the way we hold our dreams, our passions, and our desires is what we’re modeling for our children.” (Kristen Noel)
And when we’re going after our dreams with our big family-loving hearts, it’s bound to create so much for our families, too.
Dare yourself to go for it and then come tell me all about it in the email group.
I’ll be waiting there to cheer you on.
